Next Thursday Oak Bluffs voters will elect two selectmen from a crowded field of five candidates. With a still-sputtering economy and town coffers running dry, each one is claiming the mantle of financial leadership.
This week the Gazette spoke with all five candidates.
Despite the town’s recent fiscal woes both incumbents touted their financial credentials and promised innovative measures both to raise revenue and cut spending in the years ahead.
Two-term selectman Ronald DiOrio said the town has in fact done an impressive job managing its finances in the face of tremendous obstacles.
“We have the highest bond rating in the town’s history,” Mr. DiOrio said. At the end of March the town learned that it retained its Standard and Poor’s rating of AA despite its well-publicized fiscal problems. “[The rating agency] cited two things that I created: one is the employee paid-for retirement medical coverage and the second was passage of the room tax and the meals tax,” Mr. DiOrio said.
Mr. DiOrio is most proud of his involvement with the conversion of the old library to an apartment building with a pharmacy on the ground floor. The project, he said, illustrates the concept of smart growth, an approach he maintains is key to keeping the downtown vital.
“We have to take steps to ensure that we have a town that is always convenient for people who live here,” Mr. DiOrio said. “It’s no accident that Oak Bluffs has had the highest percentage of growth of any town on the Island.”
When it comes to managing the budget, Mr. DiOrio said in the future leaner is better.
“Remember that this is a balanced budget and I’ve worked very hard to bring this budget into balance and we can’t now slide back,” he said. “You go through lean years and you go through good years and what we have to do is spend appropriately so that we are not overspending during the lean years. We have got to continue to trim staff and really manage our dollars a lot better than we have in past.”
For two-term selectman and board chairman Duncan Ross, possibilities abound for raising revenue in the town, from dedicating off-site paid parking spots for downtown employees to inviting cruise ships into port to expanding food peddling licenses at Pay and Inkwell Beaches. Mr. Ross also believes the town could do more to crack down on scofflaw business owners, at least 40 of whom did not pay their business license fees last year. The fees range from $50 to $100.
“What I’d like to do is make sure that absolutely everyone knows they have to have a business license and if they don’t have it by a certain date they will be fined and the fine will be substantial,” he said.
In addition Mr. Ross eyed reorganization in town government as a potential cost-cutting measure, by eliminating or combining redundant clerical positions. He also promotes stocking the finance committee with members who have a strong background in municipal finance.
“We need to seriously consider moving to an appointed financial committee as opposed to an elected financial committee,” he said. Finally Mr. Ross said that he was proud of his role in rolling back the start time of selectmen’s meetings from 7 to 4 p.m., a move he says has made it more convenient for town employees to attend.
“When we first started it people were afraid it would keep a lot of people from coming to the meeting,” he said. “It hasn’t — it hasn’t had any affect on attendance whatsoever.”
Tell that to challenger Walter Vail who is pushing to move the meetings back to a later time.
“It would allow more people to come down and hear what the selectmen are saying and for selectmen to listen to what people have to say,” he said. Opening lines of communication both between government and the public and within town government itself is one of Mr. Vail’s campaign themes.
“The board has to reach out and do a much better job of communicating,” he said. “The taxpayers have to put some effort into learning what’s going on but I really sense that the selectmen need to do much, much more.”
Mr. Vail is a former vice president at Merrill Lynch and business owner who has served on school boards and zoning boards in New York and New Hampshire, as well as the Island Affordable Housing Fund on the Vineyard. He makes no apologies for the potentially painful cuts needed to balance the town’s books.
“I look at this position as representing the taxpayer, not the town employees,” he said. “I think that there are going to have to be some cuts and I think some of it might hurt along the way.”
Mr. Vail advocates that town employees pick up more of their health insurance costs and has proposed starting each town department on what he calls a zero base.
“You start each department with no money and say, how would you build from here and why?” he said. “That’s the business-like approach and I’ve done that in the past. You just have to get in there and ask, are all your people necessary and why?”
Mr. Vail is not the only challenger running on his business background. Seasons Pub and Lookout Tavern managering partner Michael Santoro points to his 30 years in the hospitality industry working for businesses like the Sheraton Hotel and Waterville Valley as proof of his management skills.
“I’ve done multimillion dollar budgets, I’ve overseen a staff of over 90 employees so I’ve had to set budgets for them, and had to make payrolls where our economy relies on revenue dollar,” he said. “I’ve had to make some hard sacrifices to adapt to the economic climate.”
In his view the board lacks the sort of business acumen necessary during lean times.
“I really believe that we need business-minded people on the board,” he said. “Every household has had to cut back on their budgets, I’ve had to make drastic cuts as a business person. I’m working two to three times harder than I was three years ago. The town needs to operate as a business and make some hard decisions.”
Whatever those hard decisions will be, Mr. Santoro is convinced he could cut the current budget without sacrificing education or essential services in town by sitting down with each department head and evaluating the merits of each line item. He points to a recent episode in his capacity as restaurateur as an example of his forward financial thinking.
“We just had a gas crisis here where gas prices skyrocketed and we saw that coming,” he said. “I anticipated food costs going up so I had to adapt my menu accordingly and I’m wondering if town departments had the foresight to relay that to their department heads and say, hey, gas prices are going up, it’s going to affect your budget, you’ve got to act now.”
Former health care CEO and pharmaceutical researcher Abraham Seiman takes a softer approach, advocating cooperation among the Island towns to raise revenue.
“Towns cannot survive by doing everything separately,” he said. “Incomes need to be shared among the townships.”
Although Vineyarders historically may be skeptical of such a cooperative approach, Mr. Seiman has a history of making such unlikely alliances. As a health care administrator in New York city he helped bring five separate senior centers together in Manhattan and Albany on behalf of the elderly. In that experience he sees a model for this Island in trying economic times.
“Here we have a lot of shared needs between the six towns even though they don’t really want to get together,” he said. “The Lagoon needs a lot of work, paving needs a lot of work. We can’t borrow any more money because our debt payoffs are huge, so I think that all the towns are going to have to give up some of their selectivity and stop thinking just of themselves. I think we need to think about it more in terms of the Island.”
In addition to regionalization among police departments, Mr. Seiman said there may be opportunities for Islandwide consolidation in the fire departments and in sanitation as well.
“Cooperation is the key,” he said.
Regardless of the outcome, when the election is over one Oak Bluffs restaurant is opening again that night for the season.
“I’m hoping there will be some celebrating at the Lookout,” said Mr. Santoro.
In other contested races, Oak Bluffs Inn owner Erik Albert will seek reelection to the planning board against challenger Kris W. Chvatal, who is currently the chairman of the zoning board of appeals.
Four candidates will vie for three spots on the finance and advisory committee, including Mr. Seiman, wastewater commissioner Joe Alosso, commercial fisherman William Alwardt and Oak Bluffs resident Maura McGroarty.
Selectman Gail Barmakian will run for reelection to the wastewater commission against business owner Mark Wallace.
Polling hours are 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.; the polling place is the Oak Bluffs Library.
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